Doug Jones Says Trump’s ‘Racist Language’ Divides the Nation

President Donald Trump used “racist language” that is further dividing Americans when he suggested four women in Congress could leave the country if they don’t like it, U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said Thursday.

“To use racist language, and it was that — I’m not calling the president a racist, but he used racist language to do this — this is the same kind of dog whistle politics that we have seen before,” Jones said during a conference phone call with reporters.

“But folks, we have to resist the pull of the forces that are trying to divide us,” Jones said. “We need to come together as one America and work together to live up to the lofty ideals our country was founded on.

“Attacking the patriotism of other Americans using hateful rhetoric and dog whistle messages doesn’t get us any closer to achieving those unifying principles.”

Jones became the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama in 25 years when he defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election in December 2017. He is seeking election to a full term in 2020.

Trump has overwhelming support in Alabama, and he has called on Republicans to see that Jones is defeated next year.

Jones said the nation united around man’s first moon landing 50 years ago this week, and he suggested it is time to rekindle that spirit.

“Every day, we have to resolve ourselves — no matter what the president is tweeting, no matter what is going on in the news — to choose unity over division,” he said. “We have to choose to respect the dignity of our fellow Americans, even if we disagree with them on certain issues. At the end of the day, we are all Americans, and we all want this country to be the best version of itself.”

He said he doesn’t agree politically with the women who were criticized by the president, but he supports their right to free speech.

“President Trump was the leader of criticizing how this government was run during President Obama, and no one ever asked him to go somewhere else,” Jones said. “It was his right to do that. It helped propel him into the presidency. We can’t use this kind of language. In Alabama especially, we have seen too much of that language. It causes hurt, it causes pain, and in some cases if we are not careful it will cause violence.”

Trump Crowd Chants ‘Send Her Back’

Trump tweeted on July 14 that the four Democratic House members — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – can leave the United States if they don’t like it.

Trump said the four “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe” and suggested “they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Omar came to the United States from Somalia when she was a child, and the other three were born in America.

At a political rally Wednesday in Greenville, North Carolina, a crowd of Trump supporters chanted “Send her back” after the president criticized the group and mentioned Rep. Omar specifically.

“They never have anything good to say,” the president told the crowd. “That’s why I say, ‘Hey if you don’t like it, let ‘em leave, let ‘em leave.’”

Later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he did not approve of the crowd’s chanting and that he was “not happy with it. I disagree with it. But again, I didn’t say that. They did. But I disagree with it.”

The House of Representatives on Tuesday condemned Trump’s tweet as racist.

Sewell Criticizes Trump, Palmer Defends Him But Didn’t Like Tweets

Other members of Alabama’s congressional delegation were divided in their reaction to the controversy.

“The president’s attacks are overtly racist,” Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, tweeted on Tuesday. “These Congresswomen are U.S. citizens who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution [and] improve our nation. To say their voices don’t belong [because] of the color of their skin is below the dignity of the presidency.”

On Thursday, Sewell responded to the president’s rally in North Carolina: “Over and over, Pres. Trump has proven his contempt for women and others who stand up to his bullying and hatred.”

Republican Rep. Gary Palmer issued a statement supporting the president, but saying Trump’s comments were “ill-timed and insensitive, but not racist.”

“The hypocrisy is glaringly apparent when you consider that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tweeted, ‘This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants,’ and that Representative Ilhan Omar recently tweeted that support for Israel was ‘all about the Benjamins,’” Palmer said.

“Instead of wasting time on comments made on a Twitter account, we should be focused on addressing the issues that are of greatest concern to Americans, including the crisis at our southern border,” he said. “This is what we have been elected to do. We have not been elected as the social media police.”

Jones called on members of both parties to condemn rhetoric that divides the nation.

“I truly in my heart believe the arc of the moral universe will ultimately bend towards justice, but that’s going to require each of us to stand up and condemn these kinds of attacks, no matter which side of the political aisle they come from,” he said “Attacking the patriotism of other Americans, especially members of Congress, using hateful rhetoric and dog whistle messages doesn’t get us any closer to achieving those unifying principals,” he said.

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Coronavirus

Confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases in Alabama have risen by 2,742 in the past week, an average of 391.7 cases per day. Deaths also have risen by 79, an average of 11.3 deaths a day.

That shows a decrease in average daily cases and a slight increase in average daily deaths from the week before, when the state averaged 519 total cases and 9.9 deaths a day.

Case counts and deaths reported on the Alabama Department of Public Health’s website had been undercounted this past week because the national surveillance system had been overwhelmed, department officials said. The result was that the site appeared to indicate Alabama was making more progress in the fight against the coronavirus than it actually was.

But the department reported Saturday morning that the backlog had been cleared. Read more.

Economy

A coalition of community groups, in partnership with the city of Birmingham, has set up the Birmingham Business Relief Fund to give grants to small businesses affected by protestors’ vandalism Sunday night. “Many businesses were already suffering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these funds will assist businesses as they rebuild, repair and renew their operations,” Ivan Holloway, executive director at Urban Impact, said in a statement announcing the program. Read more.

City of Birmingham

Responding to questions this morning on the NBC Today show, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said he received death threats in response to his order to take down a Confederate monument in the wake of destructive protests Sunday night.

“Unfortunately, in the state of Alabama, there’s a lot of people who like to participate in revisionist history,” Woodfin said, speaking with host Al Roker. “They believe it’s American to support the Civil War as relates to these competitive monuments. They’re mad because we took the statue down and, yes, there have been several threats. Read more.

Race in Birmingham

A Confederate monument that stood in a downtown Birmingham’s Linn Park for 115 years is now gone. Crews removed the structure following protests over police treatment of black Americans that turned destructive on Sunday, damaging many buildings. This happened in a city that prides itself on its history of nonviolent protest during the civil rights era. Rev. Thomas Wilder leads Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville. It’s the same church Birmingham civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth once led. Wilder spoke with WBHM’s Andrew Yeager. Read more.

COVID-19

The Jefferson County Department of Health has released COVID-19 numbers by areas in the county, but not down to the ZIP code level that local officials and the media have been requesting.

Health department officials have said releasing information by ZIP code would violate federal medical privacy laws. So, they created regions, which can include one or more ZIP codes, that take in 20,000 or more people where there have been at least 10 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The material does show some areas where the coronavirus has penetrated more deeply, including several western, southwestern and north-central areas of the county and sections of Birmingham, but the concentration is lighter in other areas. Read more.

The coronavirus pandemic has spurred a new wave of legal challenges to Alabama’s voting laws, particularly its absentee ballot requirements. The League of Women Voters of Alabama is the latest group to file a lawsuit against the state claiming its voting rules are too restrictive. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Montgomery County Circuit Court, urges state officials to expand absentee ballot access during the November general election. Read more.

UAB epidemiologist Dr. Rachael Lee today said that Alabamians will have to exercise personal responsibility to keep the state’s increasing COVID-19 infections from overwhelming the health care system.

Lee said that the increasing number of positive cases is “concerning,” particularly as the state increasingly relaxes restrictions and as the number of tests administered remains steady. Alabama is one of several states being watched because the number of confirmed positive cases of the potentially deadly viral infection are going up.

Lee held UAB’s weekly coronavirus press conference the day after the largest single day increase in coronavirus cases in the state. She addressed a wide range of questions during the more than 45-minute-long press conference, dealing largely with the spike in cases, hospitals’ nearing capacity in some areas, how the coronavirus differs from the flu, remdesivir, the feared second wave and the ongoing need for personal protective measures. Read more.

Though deploying in much smaller numbers than they did during the height of U.S. involvement in the Iraq and Afghan wars, Alabama National Guard troops are still deploying, and in the time of COVID-19, they are doing things a little differently.

About 30 soldiers with the Guard’s 666th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company are expected to deploy in the near future for about nine months overseas. Earlier this month, the soldiers with the Jacksonville-based unit arrived at a mobilization station for additional training before they deploy. But the soldiers did not hit the ground running. Because of the COVID-19 threat, they have some additional do’s and don’ts. Read more.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham and Southern Research of Birmingham will be part of an international program that will try to identify existing drugs that may be effective in treating people exposed to COVID-19.

The effort, coordinated by Scripps Research of La Jolla, California, involves ReFRAME, a large collection of drugs developed for other diseases and known to be safe for humans, UAB said today. Read more.

The spread of COVID-19 and the strain it has placed on Alabama’s health care system has inspired a new coalition to push for Medicaid expansion in the state, but support from Republican leadership still seems doubtful. Read more.

An Auburn University professor will soon begin testing new COVID-19 vaccines to see how they work alone or with other ingredients to help slow the spread of the virus.

Dr. Constantinos Kyriakis, an associate professor for the College of Veterinary Medicine, will head the testing while working with Professor Ted Ross, the director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia. Kryiakis will begin animal trials to investigate the effectiveness of different vaccine candidates.

The testing will involve vaccine candidates’ effectiveness at triggering an immune system response in pigs. The tests will see what other ingredients could trigger a greater immune system response, in order to make the most effective vaccine. Read more.

UAB doctors hope a low-risk, FDA-approved drug to be tested at UAB Hospital will serve as a “rescue therapy” for ventilated patients with lungs seriously damaged by the coronavirus, COVID-19. UAB is among the first in the nation to offer inhaled nitric oxide as a potential viable treatment in its intensive care unit for the sickest of these patients, officials said in a telephone news conference. Read more.

As the fear of coming into contact with the novel coronavirus increases, people are asking how long the virus can live on surfaces and in the air. There’s no one easy answer because the virus can live for different lengths of time on different surfaces, but a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine sought to break down those risks. The study found that the half-life of the virus hanging in the air is about one hour. But researchers still could measure viable virus in the air after three hours. Read more.

Law enforcement

The Alabama Department of Transportation is considering allowing law enforcement agencies access to ALDOT rights-of-way and structures to install license plate readers and other surveillance equipment.

At least one Alabama lawmaker said legislation may be needed to regulate the use of the devices and information they collect.

Tony Harris, government relations manager for ALDOT, told Alabama Daily News the proposed rules are a result of recent requests from multiple police agencies. Read more.

Jefferson County Commission

Polling places in Jefferson County could be in line to receive more money to host elections, according to a report from Barry Stephenson, chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Registrars.

Speaking at Thursday’s meeting of the Jefferson County Commission, Stephenson said that the county last increased the rent offered to sites that host polling places in October 2018. That took the rent from $25 to $100.

The registrar said an increase in rent this year would be a sign of goodwill. When asked, Stephenson said the rent could be raised to $250 for each of the county’s 175 polling places; he said only 60 polling places actually accept rent. Read more.

Open Records

Two environmental groups filed suit this week under the Alabama Open Records Act seeking to force state officials to turn over documents related to the 35th Avenue Superfund federal bribery trial.

Over the past few years many nonprofits, news organizations and others have attempted to use the law to gain access to information but often have been stonewalled by agencies and their officers.

The Environmental Defense Alliance and Gasp, a clean air and human rights advocate, filed a lawsuit claiming that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, the director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and a member of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission violated the Open Records Act by denying access to public records. Read more.

City of Birmingham

Birmingham’s FY 2021 budget will be delayed for three months as the city works to ascertain the financial impact of COVID-19.

Mayor Randall Woodfin told the City Council on Tuesday morning that the city could take a $75 million to $110 million hit to next year’s budget because of losses in revenues from sources such as sales, use and occupational taxes. He hopes delaying the budgeting process will give city leaders more time to understand the extent of the damage.

“Adjustments to an operational budget of our size to offset this amount of deficit would require major reductions and austerity measures to our current cost structures,” Woodfin said. Read more.

Birmingham has extended its ordinances requiring face coverings in public places through May 29. That’s a week later than the May 22 deadline the council set last week, and councilors have suggested that further extensions are likely as the number of COVID-19 cases in Alabama continues to rise.

The face covering ordinance has been in effect since May 1. It requires residents to wear a device covering their nose and mouth to stymie the spread of the virus. Medical-grade masks are not required; scarves, bandanas or other fabrics will suffice. A document answering frequently asked questions about the ordinance, including a list of exceptions, is available on the city’s website. Read more.

CongressionalWatch

The House on Friday narrowly approved a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package (HR 6800). Alabama’s representatives voted along party lines, with Democrat Rep. Terri Sewell voting to approve and the Republicans voting against the matter. The measure is unlikely to become law. Republican senators oppose it, and President Trump has said he would veto it. Read more.

Birmingham City Council

The Birmingham City Council has delayed a proposal to bring a new football classic to Legion Field this October. Mayor Randall Woodfin’s proposal, which appeared before the council Tuesday, would make Legion Field the site of an annual football game between Morehouse and Tuskegee universities, two historically black colleges and universities. Read more.

Politics

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones took Attorney General William Barr to task Friday, saying Barr had tossed aside the rule of law in the Justice Department’s decision to drop a 3-year-old criminal case against former Trump Administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. ”As a former U.S. attorney, I have to say I was absolutely appalled,” Jones, D-Ala., said during a Friday video news conference. “The attorney general, I think, has basically thrown the rule of law out the window” and “given a green light for people to lie to the FBI.” Read more.

Education

Alabama’s graduating high schoolers of 2019 had an overall lower performance on the ACT standardized test for the second year in a row, according to the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. But not by much. Read more.

CongressionalWatch

WASHINGTON — All of Alabama members in the U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to approve a $484 billion package to help hospitals, small businesses, farms and other recipients cope with economic misfortune over the next few months of the coronavirus pandemic. Read More

About News

Never more than Monday have I worried that Donald Trump spends too much time trying to defend his past actions and not enough on forging a plan to eradicate the coronavirus and return the country to normal. Read more.

U.S. Senate Runoff Election

The outbreak of the new coronavirus has drastically altered the campaigns for Alabama’s runoff elections. Originally scheduled for March 31, runoffs for the Republican races for Congress and U.S. Senate are now postponed until July 14.

The pandemic and its total consumption of the news cycle have also shifted the narrative for candidates. Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running for his former seat in the U.S. Senate, has capitalized on the situation to take an aggressive position against China and highlight his foreign policy bonafides.

In the runoff, Sessions faces former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, who won 33% of the vote to Sessions’ 32% in the March 3 primary election. Todd Stacy of Alabama Daily News interviewed Sessions and talked about his campaign and the issues he is discussing. Read more.

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